you are not who you think you are

shit happens

If you are observant, you may have noticed that the last post on this blog was nearly two years ago… dated November 25, 2016. I didn’t know at the time I wrote that post that my 93 year old mother had just had a massive stroke, which left her paralyzed on the left side of her body. I soon flew down to Arizona (from Washington, where I live), to care for her. My 102 year old father was thin, frail and confused. My 65 year old brother was sick with multiple alcohol-related diseases. All three of them were under hospice care, and for much of my time caring for them, I slept only intermittently.

Over the next year+, most of my family died. My mother was the first to go, a week after her stroke, and my father the last, nearly 14 months later. In between them, my three brothers, an aunt and uncle, my son-in-law, a brother-in-law, and a friend also died.

I don’t share this to garner sympathy, but to state the obvious: shit happens. During the time I was a care-giver and administrator of estates for some of my family members, it was a challenge to find time to go grocery shopping, let alone post on this blog. But a lot of insights came to me, often in the stolen quiet hours of the night when my father was medicated enough to sleep through his Sundowning tendencies and I laid beside him, listening to his quiet, steady breathing. I hope to find time in the coming months to post some of these insights to this blog. Perhaps they will be as helpful for some of you to read about as they were for me to experience. That is my wish, and is – ultimately – the only reason I bother to write.